Neeahtima Dowdy with Woodstock Neighbors, Meg Thompson with Brain Train Centers, Alexander Bryant with Alphas1te and Gerald Scott

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Stone Payton: [00:00:24] Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Cherokee Business Radio Stone Payton here with you this morning. And today’s episode is brought to you in part by our Community Partner program, the Business RadioX Main Street Warriors Defending capitalism, promoting small business and supporting our local community. For more information, go to Main Street warriors.org and a special note of thanks to our title sponsor for the Cherokee chapter of Main Street Warriors Diesel David Inc. Please go check them out at diesel. David.com. You guys are in for a real treat this morning. We’ve got paparazzi, we’ve got a video crew, we’ve got a studio full. This is going to be a lot of fun. First up on Cherokee business radio this morning, please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Woodstock Neighbors magazine, Neeahtima Dowdy. How are you?

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:01:20] Hey, Stone, I’m so glad to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Stone Payton: [00:01:24] Well, it’s a delight to have you in the studio. I thoroughly enjoyed getting together with you. Last week we were over at the Reeves house. I was enjoying a cortado, which I only discovered recently what that is because I was watching one of my favorite shows, Billions. And there’s a character there that makes this cortado. But we had such a marvelous visit. I knew immediately we had to get you on air. We got to we have to share this story. So I got a thousand questions. I know we’re not going to get to them all, I’m sure, but maybe a good place to start is mission purpose. What are you and your team over there really trying to do for folks with this magazine?

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:02:04] We are trying to bring neighbors together and bring neighbors together with their businesses. So my magazine, I’m sort of like a franchise. I’m the local publisher of Woodstock Neighbors magazine for a company that has more than 1300 magazines just like it in communities all over North America, like east, west, north, south, big cities, small towns. And we we we bring neighbors together. We don’t send them, you know, 70 pages of ads and advertorials. We feature families on the cover. And we try to bring a small number of people in the community together to get to know their neighbor and and businesses sponsor it and allow that to happen.

Stone Payton: [00:02:50] Sounds like good work if you can get it. It must be incredibly rewarding. What are you enjoying the most? What are you finding the most rewarding up to now?

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:02:58] Oh goodness. So I was four months in the launch. The first issue just hit homes, so I am looking forward to feedback. I got a call last night from a business owner who said, Hey, I got your magazine in the mail and it looks really good and I’d like to talk to you about it. So I’m meeting with him today, so I’m looking forward to that. But so far, I mean, the best part is getting immersed in this Woodstock community. I you know, I raised children for 25 years, so I didn’t need to go to networking events or be a member of the chamber. And since I’ve started the magazine, man, I’ve made best friends. That Woodstock Business Club can keep you out partying every night if you let it. I had to beg off last night from trivia night. Yeah. So just new best friends. You know, whether they become my client or not. I’m meeting the most amazing people and developing these strong bonds and this even deeper love for the community.

Stone Payton: [00:04:04] So tell us a little bit more about the backstory. What in the world compelled you to get into into this line of work?

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:04:11] Well, so it’s it’s I’ve kind of come back full circle. I went to the University of Texas and got a journalism degree when lo those many years ago and my early career was in sort of every form of communications you can imagine from from beat reporter to editor to corporate communications to politics, political campaigns, corporate consulting for Fortune 100 companies. And then I met my husband and had children, three children, to be exact.

Stone Payton: [00:04:44] All hobbies and outside interests are parked for years now.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:04:47] Exactly. So.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:04:49] So I was the full time caregiver for them and mostly full time driver for them for a number of years. And then, you know, they’re all at college or grown now and all of a sudden this opportunity dropped into my lap and I thought, this has got my name written all over it. So I jumped in with both feet and did it scared. And so here we are and I’ve gotten to print and I think it’s going to be a really great magazine. Scene for the community.

Stone Payton: [00:05:24] So what was that conversation like when you. Went back to your spouse and you said, hey, I’m going to jump off this cliff and I’m going to do this. Entrepreneurial magazine thing. I’m trying to envision me having that conversation with Holly.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:05:37] Well, you know, the good news was there was absolutely no risk and all upside. Wow. So so it was I just kept it sounded too good to be true, to be honest. We get that a lot in our company. And but I since there was no risk, it was just an investment of time on my part. I just kept looking at Craig and saying, I don’t see the risk. I mean, what’s the worst thing that happens? I can’t do it. I suck at it.

Stone Payton: [00:06:10] Well, it sounds like Craig, you said yes. He’s been incredibly supportive.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:06:14] He has. He has.

Stone Payton: [00:06:15] Yeah. All right. So in this day and age, at least, my perception is that so much marketing has gone with other platforms, digital platforms and social media and all that. How do you reconcile that? Is that good? Do they play with each other? Speak to that a little bit?

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:06:32] Well, and therein lies the problem, right? So the Harvard Business Review recently did a study and and shows that the major advertisers are all returning to print because digital has become too diluted. I mean, everybody listening knows they scroll through their Googles and their Facebook’s and their Instagrams and they are overwhelmed with ads, most of them they’ve never heard of. So the study that Harvard Business Review did showed that print is still by far the most trusted form of advertising for consumers. Digital is the least. So everybody is on the digital bandwagon. But the truth is, it’s really hard to to make digital work. So I started an inspirational platform about a year and a half ago, which is now on hold. So I got to meet, you know, influencers with 100,000 followers and sort of they mentored me. You, if you want to make social media work for your business, you have to do it full time. You’re posting 1 to 2 times a day. You’re following the right people. You’re commenting on hundreds of posts, you’re replying to every comment on your post because it’s all about engagement. The social media platforms aren’t going to push you out there just because you did a post. It’s it’s your engagement numbers. So it’s really hard to make work unless you have full time to spend on it. And most businesses don’t. And it’s it’s very expensive to hire somebody to do it. So so yeah, digital and the digital advertising has become diluted. Now what we do that’s unique from other print platforms is we combine both. We do think there’s a place for digital, but you need the legitimacy of being in print in their home every month so that when they’re Googling for their roofer and they’re scrolling past all these ads, they go, Oh, I’ve heard of that guy, I know that guy. He’s in our community. So we pair them together. We our programs all have a digital ad campaign component where we take your print ad and then we run a digital campaign that marries with it.

Stone Payton: [00:08:51] Well, I think you just answered part of my next question because your your work strikes me as a very competitive arena.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:08:58] You think?

Stone Payton: [00:08:59] And so I okay, apparently the answer to that is yes. So how do you differentiate yourself from these other print platforms? And apparently this is one of the ways is that you you don’t throw out the digital, you find the best way to leverage it. But are there other points of distinction that you try to bring up?

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:09:20] Absolutely. So, number one, most of other community magazines sell their front cover, which is great. If you’re a business, maybe you’re doing a grand opening or something and you want to make a big splash and get that big bump. But, you know, that magazine then finds its way into the recycle bin and nobody nobody remembers you. So we think that’s not good for our readers and not good for our businesses. So we put our readers on the cover. We put families on the cover, hence bringing the neighbors together. So we have a very high open rate because people want to read about the people they’re raising their children with in the neighborhood. So we have a very high open rate. And then, you know, we make it past the recycle bin into the home and stay on the coffee table, which is if you’re a sponsor where you want to be. Right. Another another big difference is we have an expert contributor program for our businesses that allows them to contribute to. The magazine as not advertorial, but as saying, I’m here to serve you. I’m here to be an expert to help you. I don’t just want your business. I am one of you. And I care about our community.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:10:35] Fun.

Stone Payton: [00:10:36] I bet you get asked that a lot, though, right?

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:10:38] I do.

Stone Payton: [00:10:40] All right. So let’s talk about the work a little bit and how the process works. Let’s say hypothetically, there’s even a media company that does like radio, but they also recognize the advantage in the power and print medium. How does that work? Do you sit down and talk it through and plan out a whole calendar of advertising or maybe get them to write an article? Walk us through that.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:11:04] Yeah.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:11:04] So we meet and we try to find out what what the what the client needs, what’s best for the client. You know, we have various contracts, various sizes. You can be the expert. Only one business in each category can be the expert. But, you know, you can have a primary position. We look at what serves your business the best, basically. And it may not even be in my magazine. We have 35 magazines in Georgia. So while I would like to build my magazine, if it doesn’t make sense for you to be in where my distribution goes and say it makes more sense for you to be in town Lake or Bridgemill or Lake Oconee, even I will put you in that magazine instead. It’s all what what is most important for your business, not what serves me. And then we we have free design. I have a fantastic graphic designer who who was the senior art director for Lamar Advertising. So he he knows his advertising. And so he will design your ad we don’t charge anything. You can change your ad regularly. If you are an expert contributor, you contribute up to four articles a year and I work with you to schedule that out. What makes most sense? Maybe you’re a seasonal type business, and so my solar company in my magazine wanted his article to appear in the heat of August, obviously when everybody’s bills are skyrocketing. So yeah, so we just partner with you and do what’s best for the company.

Stone Payton: [00:12:44] So how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for an enterprise like yours? Are you out there shaking the trees or are you having to eat some of your own cooking and advertising your own magazine or do some digital? How do you get that conversation that you’re describing?

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:13:01] Cold calls.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:13:03] Really? Yeah, that that was the.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:13:05] Part which, you know, there were days where I couldn’t pull my head out of the covers because I do not have a sales background. And that is the major component of building a magazine, as you might might imagine. So, you know, I had to do it scared, you know, prospect cold calls, network. But but really it’s the cold calls. You know, my first two clients were 36 month expert contributors who I cold called and signed up on. So, you know, that was beginner’s luck, I guess.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:13:40] But wow.

Stone Payton: [00:13:42] No, that’s incredible. Well, good for you.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:13:44] But it’s.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:13:45] It’s beating. Beating the pavement for sure.

Stone Payton: [00:13:48] So do you ever get the ROI question? Like, do you have a client who’s interested? It looks cool. I love the idea, you know, Are they asking about numbers? How do you like the metrics that matter? They’re asking about that return on investment. You have that conversation, I’m sure.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:14:03] Of course.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:14:04] Yes. And that is, you know, today’s business owners, mainly the small business owners, you know, they want they’re they’re attuned to that direct response mentality that, you know, here 50% off for new clients.

Stone Payton: [00:14:18] And we can’t make too many big mistakes. A small business owners. Right. I mean. Right. Some of us are 2 or 3 big mistakes away from shutting the doors.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:14:26] Right.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:14:27] But more and more of these small businesses I meet with will tell me also that, you know, they’ve they’ve hired a lead magnet type thing and it’s terrible. And they’re going to fire them, you know, So we try to teach the companies how to how to work like big brands, right? So take Chick fil A, Everybody knows where their local Chick fil A is. Right? Everybody knows where, you know, the next three local Chick fil A’s are. And yet Chick fil A is still branding, right? Why? Because they know big brands know you have to stay top of mind and make people feel good about doing business with you. And if you think about if you’ve seen one of their commercials, I’m sure you have, they’re not showing their chicken sandwich and saying, we have the best lunch on the planet. What are they doing? They have a local manager or employee and. A customer or family and they’re talking about something wonderful they did in the community. That’s that feeling good component. So we try to teach our clients how to think like big brands to be part of the community. Make make sure that you’re you’re top of mind because, you know, people don’t go and get their direct mail flier from the mailbox and come in and say, Honey, let’s build a $100,000 pool. It doesn’t work like that, right? So when they start having that conversation, are you top of mind? Right. So that’s why we’re different, right? The direct mail flier hits the recycle bin and then you’re forgotten. And when they decide they need $100,000 pool, you’re not known. We keep you in their house every month. So when they make these big ticket decisions or there’s a storm and they have to repair their roof or replace their roof, your top of mind and they feel good about doing business with you because they know you’re one of them. You care about their community.

Stone Payton: [00:16:27] You’ve mentioned roofing a couple of times. Is this home services arena a good group of people or.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:16:34] It is a good group.

Stone Payton: [00:16:35] Of people, people like who are what kinds of businesses should at least have a conversation?

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:16:40] Well, anybody who wants a client in Woodstock.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:16:44] That we.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:16:45] Go exclusively to the most affluent homeowners I should have mentioned. That’s another way we’re different. We don’t blanket the county. We exclusively go to the high end, high value customers. And so anybody who wants those clients, I have financial advisors. I’m meeting with an insurance person today. I have a garage kings. The the people who do the fancy tricked out garage floors.

Stone Payton: [00:17:14] I’m lobbying my wife right now.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:17:15] To get that done. Well, you need Jay Hart at Karachi Kings.

Stone Payton: [00:17:19] All right. Well, I’ll tell him I got it from you. I’ll tell him I got it from your magazine.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:17:22] Yes, he was. He was my.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:17:23] First client, actually. So. Yeah, everything hard, hard scrapers, landscapers, pest control, cleaning salons, restaurants. I mean, just, you name it. If it’s somebody with expendable income in Woodstock and you want their business, this is the way to reach them.

Stone Payton: [00:17:41] All right. I’m going to shift gears on you a little bit before we wrap. Talk to me about passions outside the scope of your work. Is there something that I don’t know you kind of nerd out about? Most of my listeners know hunting, fishing, travel and scotch and bourbon. Right? That’s for me.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:17:58] Well, what are you into.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:17:59] On a on a recent level, I just got four chickens.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:18:05] Okay. Okay. That’s different.

Stone Payton: [00:18:07] I may be the first chicken answer we’ve had.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:18:09] I nerd out on my chickens. In fact, when we get they’re teenagers right now. But when we first got them, my husband and I would go out every night for happy hour with our cocktails and just sit there and stare at the chickens. It’s I don’t know. Yeah. So that’s about as nerdy as you get, Right?

Stone Payton: [00:18:26] And they lay eggs.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:18:27] Do we get eggs? Not yet. But they will. Yeah, they will.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:18:29] Yeah. Yeah, they will. But on a on a higher level, about a year and a half ago or more, I started a, a platform which is on hiatus, but I haven’t, I haven’t gotten rid of it called We’re Not Dead Yet women rocking their next chapter and I launched a YouTube channel. Another thing I did Terrified, where I interviewed women over 40, 50, 60 and beyond who are reinventing themselves, kind of like I am right now to inspire other women. And, you know, for, I don’t know, over a year, I was doing an interview about a week and then developed the social media platforms on Instagram and Facebook and got a huge following. But then, you know, this Woodstock neighbors thing dropped in my lap. And I said, I got to I got to practice what I preach. I got to I got to live my next best chapter. And and take a risk. So.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:19:26] All right.

Stone Payton: [00:19:27] Where can our listeners go to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you, or just learn a little bit more about the magazine? What’s the best way for them to to connect with you?

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:19:36] So the best way is probably on Instagram. You can message me on Instagram at Woodstock Neighbors Wbvm. Or if you just Google Woodstock neighbors, it’ll probably come up.

Stone Payton: [00:19:50] Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for coming in and sharing.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:19:53] Stone.

Stone Payton: [00:19:54] This is fun stuff.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:19:55] It is. Thanks.

Stone Payton: [00:19:57] How about hanging out with us while we visit with our other guests?

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:19:59] Absolutely. I know one of them.

Stone Payton: [00:20:02] All right. Next up on Cherokee Business Radio this morning, please join me in welcoming to the show with Brain Train Centers. Ms. Meg Thompson, how are you doing?

Meg Thompson: [00:20:13] I’m pretty good, Stone. How are you?

Stone Payton: [00:20:15] I’m doing well. So the way the business radio process works and I don’t know if this was built in before I joined the network. Work or not. But I’ve had a beer with just about everybody at this table already. You and I shared a beer and a marvelous meal. Thoroughly enjoyed that conversation. Begun to learn just a little bit. But tell us about brain training centers, what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

Meg Thompson: [00:20:40] Okay. Yeah, and you’re right. We had a really good beer and burger. I was, like, amazed. Okay. So I am excited to to be able to be back in North Georgia. I’m actually from north Georgia. And as I said, out on my journey, like all this years ago, to go branch out into the world, I fell into oncology after about eight years. I said, okay, I’ve got to do something in design. I’ve got to do something that speaks to me. So I went into design and marketing, and when I realized you’re climbing the ladder to success but potentially not fulfilling your purpose, I started figuring out who am I, what do I want to do for my career and how do I have purpose? And so I went straight into figuring out why do I make the decisions I make. I found another entrepreneur through networking groups Melissa Hergert, who started brain train centers, and she said, Why don’t you work on yourself? Let’s do this. And so I said, okay. After a lot of networking events and talking and getting to know her, I said, okay, I’m going to work on myself. I started neurofeedback brain training and I started working on myself. And then I realized I had so much more creativity in me than just marketing and design, though it’s the basis of my career. It changed my mind. It changed my life. It gave me a sense of purpose. I realized I needed to help other people. And so then a path started of wellness. And so a reinvention personally became a mission and a purpose for helping others. And so I started brain train centers off of Sixes Road in Woodstock. I was one of the first to talk to her about in this concept of, I would say she had other people, other partners across the nation.

Meg Thompson: [00:22:29] But I really started talking to her about a year and a half ago about starting my own location. And when I decided where to go, it was a natural segway. Okay, I’m going to go back home. I’m going to stop traveling around the country and stop being backpacked. Megan And I’m going to go home. So I went back home to Woodstock, and it was a journey to come back here, and I’ll tell that story one day. But yeah, to come back here and start figuring out what am I doing and how can I help people because there’s so much that we can help with brain training. So essentially what brain training is It sounds like nuts. Probably people are like, What are you talking about? We’re physical trainers for your brain, essentially. So it’s in the wellness space. It’s noninvasive, it’s drugless. It’s using technology and marketing. Essentially. We’ve got to educate and talk to people about what it is. But it’s technology. It’s hardware and software sensors that go on your head that can help us understand your brain, which I’m kind of a nerd. Like I started 3D printing companies and I’ve done all these little, you know, perceivable like the world would say nerdy things because, you know, I was a 3D animator and graphic designer and a coder and a web developer, and I just loved all of those little, you know, technology and marketing things. And so when I found that this type of technology tells you about how your brain is behaving and why we do the things we do.

Stone Payton: [00:23:57] Wow.

Stone Payton: [00:23:57] So how do you how do you know if you need or would truly benefit from brain training?

Meg Thompson: [00:24:03] Yeah. Okay. So, well, we start with a brain map. It literally tells you what’s going on with your brain. And so we get this little report and it’s a visual, but it’s also interpreted in a written format that tells you what’s going on with your brain. And they’re all unique. So we’re looking for more gray matter on the map, but it lights up with colors and it tells us what’s going on. It tells us about your decision making, how your focus is your mood, and it can tell you about how your sleep is. We even get like a report of your supplements that you might need to take to help you with your nutrition so that you can understand more about is this all inclusive? The captain of our entire body and our central nervous system is our brain. So if we are having a really good brain health, we’re going to have a really good, happy quality of life. So that brain map is how it all starts. And it tells us a recommendation. The software was made by a guy in metro Atlanta, a neurologist, and he has basically opened it up so that other people can come in and use the software to help other people.

Stone Payton: [00:25:16] Okay, let’s play this out a little bit. I go into one of your centers and you hook me up. And we map stones brain and we find out what kinds like what are what are some highlights of what a report might tell you or me. Yeah.

Meg Thompson: [00:25:33] So it tells us a couple of things. There’s a series of different viewpoints that we get from visuals, but it also shows us little scales like where you are on where your brain should be. And so then it provides a narrative for you. There’s a short version which I really like and a long version, but it tells you it’s very informative. And so even if you don’t decide to do brain training, which I can tell you about that in a minute, even if you don’t do brain training to re brain train, you know, the brain waves, the brain wave activity, you can still just do the map. And a lot of people use that as a baseline for other types of nutritional and even medical or non-medical wellness care.

Stone Payton: [00:26:17] All right. So you get some insight right out of the box. Here’s the way your brain has worked and it leans a little bit this way. And here’s maybe why you approach things that way. And then what I’m hearing you say is, if I decide with your counsel, hey, I really want to get better over here in this area, there’s a way to to work. It’s like exercising a muscle or something. Yes.

Meg Thompson: [00:26:38] Yeah, that’s exactly it. So essentially, we’re going to provide a report. We’ll tell you what’s going on. It’s so much information. I take my time over two sessions to go through all this. So you’ll come in and do the brain map the first session and I put it together. We have a package. So the first one is you come in for the brain map and then the second one I’ll go over the report of finding and then you get a mini brain session, 15 minutes to sit there and see what brain training is like. And at the end of the appointment, we’ll talk about, okay, do we want to work on these things? How severe are your issues? How much is it impacting your life? Do you have a hard time going to sleep? Can you stay asleep? How’s your your focus, your mood, your attention? Are you able to stay on topic? Are you able to like, I’m the worst? I’m like, I found out I do not have ADHD. I have a stress brain. I was so excited. I was like, I didn’t need any kind of medication. I’ve tried that before. I was like, Oh, I’m so no, it’s stress. So then you have to start figuring out how do you get through it? And it’s a it takes a trainer, just like you would go to a gym and it takes a dedication to your whole health. I mean, I’ve literally thought, okay, every aspect of my life now has to change. And everything that we touch, everything that we look at from technology, all of the things that we put in our body, all of those things have to be reevaluated. So it takes a trainer to say, All right, I’m going to cheerlead you on. We’re going to go through this. It’s a commitment. But if you do this for a few months or maybe even six months or nine months, whatever it takes to fix it, based on how dysregulated your brain is, you could potentially have a solution to problems versus taking pills and medicines that that really are only going to work if you take them. Okay.

Stone Payton: [00:28:27] So the technology associated is it technology that does the training as well, or is it also okay, so here’s some mental exercises you need to be doing on your own time or is it a blend of those things? If we’re in the training aspect of it?

Meg Thompson: [00:28:41] I’m glad you said that. You asked because I’ve learned that it is a whole health approach. So for me, I’m looking at all of those things. I’m guiding you through it, me, the trainers that come through, we’re working through other areas. So when you tell me, Look, my anxiety is bad, I have had people come in, their anxiety is so bad, they’re clenching their jaws. They can’t sit still or focus. Their anxiety is so bad that they’re clenching the steering wheel at Atlanta traffic and they have so much anxiety they can’t get in their car to go to work because they’re just, you know, and I don’t know how we haven’t figured out Atlanta traffic like traffic all over the world. Why haven’t we figured this out yet? But anxiety creeps up and it becomes debilitating. And so we talk about how do we fix it beyond what’s in the office. So I’m actually working on other things, meditation and other recommendations. Of course, I’m going to suggest meditation on your own. There’s some apps, there’s different things you can do, but having somebody walk you through that process is my goal. I may not have all your solutions. I’m okay. I’m not going to be an expert on everything, but I have a network of other providers and there could be wellness or medical, and I’m going to suggest those or help you guide you through that process or therapist It may be that you’re releasing potentially relationship trauma or maybe you went through a car accident or a bad legal battle. Different things in life are going to creep up on you. How do you get through it? And we start to connect. But brain training helps your hardwire, okay? It’s the hardwire in your brain, the physical waves that produce we. Study for brainwaves. Its alpha, beta, theta and Delta. And we study those brainwave patterns and brain training helps you to retrain your brainwaves.

Stone Payton: [00:30:33] Wow. All right. How does the whole sales and marketing thing work for you? Is it a hard sell? Is it an individual sale? Is it is there a corporate sale? Like I want my team to perform more effectively or even like an athletic team? Like, who buys this?

Meg Thompson: [00:30:47] Anybody with a brain? First of all.

Stone Payton: [00:30:50] We got some broad markets here, don’t we, guys?

Stone Payton: [00:30:52] Anybody who wants to sell something to somebody in Woodstock for Neophema and for you, anybody with a brain, I carry.

Meg Thompson: [00:30:57] A little brain around. I have a brain and I carry these little squishy brains. And they’re tiny. They’re so easy. They’re little stress brains. So, yeah, if you don’t have a brain, I’ll give you one. Call me a Wizard of Oz. Yeah. So, honestly, it’s. It’s a connection. I learned that, you know, we’re trainers, but at the same time, I do lead generation funnels. I’m working on some social media because.

Stone Payton: [00:31:23] You have that market, you have the marketing chops as well. So that’s helping you reach people and just have the conversation. The reason I’m asking, I can see like for someone who is on that path of personal development, they want to get better. Maybe they’re already a top performer and they want to maintain that edge or they’re trying to develop top performers. I can see writing a check, you know, for our studio partners to participate, right? Because we all everybody wins when they perform. So is it mostly that person that you’re talking to or are you finding yourself sometimes really moving people down that continuum from complete unawareness to, oh, wow, we really ought to think about this.

Meg Thompson: [00:31:58] So of course, there’s I love I love your questions. There’s so many answers. I’m like, all right. So first of all, the sales and marketing, for me, that’s the biggest part. That’s my challenge. This is new, right? To a lot of people that’s been around for 60 years. And the success rate is so great. I can talk about somebody’s brain. In less than two months has reconnected and reorganized 40%. So you’re talking about a lot of great reorganization. So the sales process is usually pretty simple. Once someone says, look, I am dealing you know, people come in, they’ll say, I can’t work. I’m getting in trouble because I can’t focus through my work and I’m getting written up. I’m a sole provider. People that are coming in saying I can’t get through my days because I’m writing multi-million dollar, extremely stressful checks, that I’m dealing with liability issues and that stress weighs on them when they go home. So it’s a lot of times it’s high performers, peak performers. It could be people that are just trying to perform better in their fitness life. So business owners come through. A lot of times they’re like, I’ve got 400 employees. I can’t deal with the stress. Well, what happens is and I gave you this quote earlier, it’s by Charles Swindoll. So I believe that life is 10% of what happens to you and 90% of how you react to it.

Meg Thompson: [00:33:24] So brain training works with operant conditioning. You basically we’re going to put headphones like these on and sensors you watch TV. This is your me time. Your brain controls the TV. When you’re paying attention, the screen gets brighter and the audio gets louder. When you’re not paying attention, it gets darker and quieter like you. Really? How cool is that? Yeah, it goes in and out. Yeah, quieter. So it’s really interesting. So this is their me time. They come in, they sit down, they do the neurofeedback. Your brain actually tells the TV what what to do basically. So you’re sitting in a recliner, you’re watching the TV, and as you’re watching it and paying attention, you’re retraining your brainwaves. So once somebody comes in and they see it, the process is simple. It’s you’ve got some issues. Do you want to actually prioritize your your brain health now or do you want to do it later? So my goal is to try to make them feel comfortable and let them know we’re here for them when they’re ready. But I want to work with people that are dedicated and ready because if you’re half in and half out, your success rate is not as as great. So I want people that are dedicated. Yeah.

Stone Payton: [00:34:35] All right. So if we play this out, maybe we have a conversation over a beer. That’s always a great that’s a good foundation for any relationship in my experience.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:34:43] I agree.

Stone Payton: [00:34:45] Then we go do like the mind mapping thing, right? And then we do kind of a deep dive, right? Like a three month, six month. We really get in there. And then over time, I’m getting the sense that you’ve taught me to fish a little bit. Like I know some things to look out for and maybe I swing by the office more. Not as much. Right, but occasionally to check in. Is that accurate? Is it?

Meg Thompson: [00:35:08] Yeah. So what happens and I’m kind of a prime advocate for this and so many other trainers have gone through this that have been training for years. I mean, this is a muscle that needs to be continuously done. However, it’s re it’s like a re event, right? So say you have a life event that has changed in like all of your things are just messed up again your memories off. All of a sudden you just start to have and there’s a list of things headaches, memory, focus, attention, negative moods, PTSD, trauma, sleep issues, substance abuse, all those things. Okay, that was a long list. All those things can get out of whack, right? And so what happens is, as you say, there’s a symptom that I’m dealing with. You call us back and you say, Hey, let’s do a remap. So we remap your brain and say, all right, this is what’s going on right now. And then we decide, all right, if you’ve done training before, you’re probably not going to need them as much. It may be ten sessions, 20 sessions, but a lot of times somebody comes in and they need 30 or 40 or 60 sessions, depending on what’s going on. And as you’re going through the program, I’m constantly looking. We’re measuring your symptoms. We’re looking at how you’re actually doing each time you come in, I’m talking to you. We’re talking about what’s going on in your life, me or the trainers that are there. And we’re figuring out how to fix your your dysregulation. We’re getting you through like you would a personal trainer dysregulation.

Stone Payton: [00:36:30] So I went straight to the the high performance as a use case but you just said PTSD so maybe you can really get at some serious things like that. I don’t know. Addiction, suicidal thoughts all.

Meg Thompson: [00:36:43] Absolutely. Wow. Yeah. So this is everyday stuff. But it could be a concussion, right? It could be somebody who’s had traumatic brain injury. We don’t diagnose. We don’t prescribe anything. We don’t we’re not giving you drugs or anything. It’s drugless. This is just your sensors on your head are the sensors are giving a connectivity to a software and this very great high technology, great program that has allowed us to have access to great mental health and brain health, you know, training. So.

Stone Payton: [00:37:18] Yeah. All right.

Stone Payton: [00:37:19] Before we wrap, what do you do when you’re when you’re not mapping minds?

Meg Thompson: [00:37:22] Oh, my gosh. It’s kind of overtaken my my brain, actually. So this is my life. So a lot of what I’m doing is I’ve become so into it. I want to be able to help people across the world that have other things that are going on beyond just brain training and a local Woodstock office. But I want to help other people. And so part of that is I’m getting out and I’m going on excursions. So you will. So I like to go hiking and I like to go, you know, trail blazing. I want to go fight all the waterfalls, like I want to collect them. Like, you know how they have like, geocaches, right? Like, how do I collect parks? Like, I would do a collection map. Okay, somebody could app that they may have an app for that, but that would be so fun. Like to go collect all the little wild adventures and see all the different, you know, waterfalls and you know, of course I grew up going to the beach all the time in Georgia. We all go to the beach. But now I’m like obsessed with going and seeing all the waterfalls and all the trails, and I like to go trail running. I love animals and I love music. So those are kind of my little joys, simple pleasures, but it’s pretty. There’s nothing like super exciting. It’s just everyday stuff that I love.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:38:34] It’s not like.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:38:34] Chickens.

Meg Thompson: [00:38:35] No, no. I like horses, though. I love horses. That’s fine. I used to volunteer at horse farms. Yeah, absolutely. Because I grew up on a farm, so.

Stone Payton: [00:38:43] Well, it’s starting to come into focus for me because one of the observations I made when we got together and had a beer and a sandwich was your jeep. It is the coolest looking jeep and it just fits your whole lifestyle mindset. Everything. You guys get a look at her jeep on your way out if you haven’t seen it.

Meg Thompson: [00:38:59] Yeah, absolutely. I’m excited. I want to put some really cool, like, you know, other things that kind of tie into my brand on the jeep. So, you know, you have to check that out later.

Stone Payton: [00:39:10] And maybe bury it in waterfall stickers, right?

Meg Thompson: [00:39:13] Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. When we talk about trailblazing, like the Jeep does, go with that.

Stone Payton: [00:39:19] All right. Where can we go to learn more? Website, email, LinkedIn, Whatever you feel like is appropriate. Let’s just make sure that our listeners can can connect with you.

Meg Thompson: [00:39:25] Okay, So the local Woodstock office, we’re off of Sixes Road so you can find us by Googling brain train centers. Woodstock, we do have other locations in the area, Kennesaw and Marietta. We have locations all over the country, even in Hawaii. I think we’re going to have 14 soon, but mine is in Woodstock. If you want to talk to me about other things outside of the local Woodstock, we do have online brain games that can go outside of Woodstock, and I’m going to have other wellness offerings that will be global. So make sure to talk to me if you’re not in the Woodstock area, did I say Woodstock enough? You can find me on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. We’re over the live feed. I should have live feed this. But brain train centers Inc.com will get you to any brain trainer brain training location. Mine is Woodstock. You can call us (470) 999-7316 because we will talk to you. You can also request an appointment online. You can call us whatever you know, find us.

Stone Payton: [00:40:33] What a delight to have you on the show. Thanks for hanging out with us.

Meg Thompson: [00:40:37] Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Stone

Stone Payton: [00:40:37] Well, stay with us.

Stone Payton: [00:40:39] We got a couple more guests we’re going to visit with.

Stone Payton: [00:40:40] All right.

Meg Thompson: [00:40:41] You got it. Thank you.

Stone Payton: [00:40:42] All right. Next up on Cherokee Business Radio this morning, we have with us the Chief Mohor of Alphas1te, Mr. Alexander Bryant. What’s going on, buddy?

Alexander Bryant: [00:40:53] Hey, Stone. Thanks for having me on.

Stone Payton: [00:40:54] Yeah, I’ve been meaning to do this for a while. You and I hang out at Fresh Start Cherokee. That’s where we see each other a lot. Absolutely. Yep. We haven’t grabbed that beer, but we’ll make it happen. Okay, buddy, It’s coming. Tell us about Alpha site man.

Alexander Bryant: [00:41:08] So Alpha Site is a digital marketing house that services businesses in the blue collar trades and home services. We help blue collar pros win through precision marketing.

Stone Payton: [00:41:18] I love the niche y, the niche. What compelled you to go that that narrow, if that’s a fair word.

Alexander Bryant: [00:41:23] So there’s a lot of reasons behind that. So one is so I wanted to start an agency for quite some time now and it’s one of those things where it’s kind of cool how things in your life that seem very disjointed and don’t seem to touch each other, you know, God can bring those together and really, truly make them make sense. So I have a degree in marketing from Reinhardt University. Never took a job in the corporate world doing marketing. That was I wind sales instead. So I have that background. I have worked for three different marketing agencies now from startups all the way to some seriously large ones. So I have experience in that field, but I’ve always had a heart for the trades because in all the in-between times in my life, whether it was in college, in between starting businesses, in between, whenever, that’s what I would always turn to. If I needed a quick job, I’d always go work construction. I’ve done carpentry work, I’ve been a heavy equipment operator. I’ve done kitchen and bathroom remodels. I really enjoy working with my hands. And I’ve always said if a few things in my life had been different, then I’d probably be doing that. I’d probably would own a business in the trades and do that instead of marketing for them. But that really combined those two things is my sales and marketing background and then also my love for the trade.

Alexander Bryant: [00:42:48] So that’s one reason. The other is it’s an awesome opportunity because most of the guys who I know in the trades are they’re very intelligent, they’re very much capable of doing these things themselves. They could figure out web design, they could figure out Facebook ads. You know, a lot of what I do is nothing compared to like the math that’s involved in building a house, but they don’t have time. So as a result, most guys in the trades, their marketing sucks because they either don’t do it at all, like they don’t have a website, they don’t have a social media presence, they don’t have any of those bases they need to cover or they delegate it out to somebody who’s really either not qualified or doesn’t want to do it like one of their kids. So as a result, their marketing suffers. They don’t get the lead volume. They want to grow and scale their business. They don’t have the digital presence they need. So what I can do for them is to come in and take that off their plate. And basically they’re hiring a pro, which is what they would recommend to their customers, and I can help them out and help them win.

Stone Payton: [00:43:48] So how do you get to these folks? How do you get to have the sales and marketing conversation? Are you out there doing the networking thing or are you eat your own cooking and you use all your agency chops to just get in front of them?

Alexander Bryant: [00:44:00] It’s a bit of both. So I do the digital side. I have a couple of Facebook groups that I use for lead generation. That’s a tool that I use. I always lead with value. I always have really solid marketing advice and tips like stuff that they would pay for, like stuff that ordinarily is for paying clients. Like here’s the exact roadmap of how you do a.

Stone Payton: [00:44:19] Certain you go out and put that out there.

Alexander Bryant: [00:44:21] Absolutely. And it’s for free, and that’s to drive value to show them, hey, like it builds trust, it builds value and shows them that I know what I’m talking about, I know what I’m doing. And even if they never sign on as a client, they still get value out of interacting with my brand. So that’s one way. And then of course, I’m cultivating that group and all that. So I’ve got a couple. Some are for local businesses, some are for wherever. But then also, yeah, the networking piece is a big thing for me because again, you meet a lot of businesses in the trades and home services. In any networking group, they’re all trying to grow too. And so that’s a very natural interaction there because if they’re in a networking group, they’re trying to grow. And I’m looking for blue collar businesses who are trying to grow. So, you know, that’s a that’s kind of a no brainer right there.

Stone Payton: [00:45:08] So I haven’t done the research at all, but I suspect there are a ton of prospective clients for you. There are a lot of blue collar businesses in this community.

Alexander Bryant: [00:45:18] Yeah, there are. It’s a massive opportunity and most of them, there are very few of them who do their marketing well. There are some that they’re big enough. They’ve scaled to the point they can hire an in-house team. They’re killing it. There’s a few that have signed on with other agencies that. I know you know friends of mine that own other agencies, most of them don’t do anything or they do it really poorly. So the opportunity is tremendous.

Stone Payton: [00:45:40] So where are some places that digital marketing, that kind of stuff can come off the rails pretty quickly? Like what are some of the mistakes that people like me and mine make?

Alexander Bryant: [00:45:52] Um, well, you know, obviously my copy paste answer is trying to do it all yourself because yeah, that’s, well.

Stone Payton: [00:45:59] Somebody was saying earlier, I mean, you got to just be on it, right? That’s true.

Alexander Bryant: [00:46:02] Well, it’s really to do marketing, right? It is a full time job. Yeah. And that’s why I recommend, unless you have someone on your team who’s doing it, like you really should hire it out to get your best ROI because you’re not. You’re leaving money on the table. So that is I would say the first one is trying to do it all yourself because you’re trying, you know, or.

Stone Payton: [00:46:21] Get your nephew to do it because they don’t have to go back to school for a few weeks.

Stone Payton: [00:46:25] Like you don’t need to.

Alexander Bryant: [00:46:28] Be focused on that. You need to focus on delivering for your clients. Like if you’re in the trades, like you need to be on the jobsite, whether that’s on the tools actually doing the work. If you’re smaller or running your crews, if you’ve got a lot of guys that work for you. So you don’t need to be focused on that because focus is a finite resource and you’re going to be spreading that too thin for the businesses that are a little bit below the point of being able to hire an agency. I’d say the mistakes that they’re making, they’re not picking the low hanging fruit. There are things that any business can do that don’t take a ton of time that will really set you apart from the ones that are not doing those things. Like one claiming your Google my business listing. It’s crazy how many businesses don’t even do that. Like they don’t even have their listing claimed, much less actually like have it updated, have it optimized for where it will actually rank locally. That’s very easy to do. It doesn’t cost anything. Having a website like obviously my recommendation is going to be to have a professionally built search engine optimized website. You know, if you want the best return.

Alexander Bryant: [00:47:29] But you know, if you’re just starting out, there’s a lot of options that are very affordable, very low cost that you can do yourself. It’s not going to be on the same level, but it’s better than no website at all. And obviously any any prospective client, especially higher end ones that most people want to work with. All other factors being equal, they’re going to go with the business that has a Web site that’s 100% of the time, unless it was like a recommendation from a very, very trusted source. That’s a word of mouth client like it’s going to digital presence is going to make the difference. Active social media pages, you know, having Facebook, Instagram, those are really the best to Instagram in particular for contractors. Really? Yes, because most of what they do is so visual, especially my my two niches really are roofers and home remodelers. I really like working with those two in particular. But it’s it’s very simple. And this is a you know, because I have like my prescription list of like, okay, like if you’re not ready to work with me, here’s the things that I would recommend to get you to the point where you can that’s on that list is, you know, get on Instagram every day and story it out.

Alexander Bryant: [00:48:37] Use your Instagram stories, get on the job site, be like, Hey, we’re over here today. We’re doing this kitchen remodel. We’re back on the job again here today. And then as you go through the day, like showcase what you’re doing, like just like 30s at a time, it doesn’t have to take much. Like every time there’s a lull, like you finish something up, tell people what you’re doing and at the end of the day be like, Hey, look at all this work we did today. Look how beautiful this is. And what that does is it showcases your expertise. You’re a pro, obviously, you know what you’re doing. It shows your personality that you’re a real person. You’re not just a faceless brand. You’re actually a person out in this community. And then also it shows the quality of your work. Like if it looks great and people can follow that like it works. And I’ve known a lot of guys that have gotten business like that. So pick the low hanging fruit, you know, don’t play on hard mode. Like there’s a lot of things you can do that don’t cost a lot that can really set you apart.

Stone Payton: [00:49:30] And this is not your first rodeo. You have another business. You’ve had other businesses in the in the past. Tell us a little bit about that whole path to to where you are now and what you feel like you’ve learned. Man, I.

Alexander Bryant: [00:49:42] Do. I actually have another business right now that’s still active. It’s alphasights older siblings, so it’s called Starcraft. It’s a wilderness skills school and outfitter. So I teach outdoor skills. So I was in I was in search and rescue for ten years. So I was search and rescue with Cherokee County Fire and Emergency Services. Loved it. Awesome work. Love the team, love the environment. Um, what I learned was that if more of our missing subjects had a basic level of outdoor skills, then they could have self rescued. That dire emergency could have been another story they could tell their buddies over a beer. So that’s what got me teaching outdoor skills. So I run classes on the weekends, at least two weekends a month. And, you know, I can do custom courses on request. So I teach a lot of everything from wilderness survival, bushcraft land navigation, pioneer skills to like adventure prep. Like if you’ve never been backpacking before, never been camping, you want to get into that, but you don’t know where to start. Like maybe you didn’t grow up with it. You know, we can get you squared away there all the way up to, you know, I do kids classes and we do all the things all the way up to.

Stone Payton: [00:50:50] You have these things.

Stone Payton: [00:50:51] Going simultaneously. This whole business you’re describing and this agency business.

Alexander Bryant: [00:50:55] Yeah, we do high level stuff too. Like we’re actually we’re doing an advanced land navigation course for some guys who are trying out for Special Forces selection. So we do like prep for Ranger School, SF Adventure racers. Like if you want to do like a 50 k off grid ultra marathon, like we’ll get you set for that.

Stone Payton: [00:51:13] But you got Megan, Nia Timmer all over it. Me and Gerald, we’re not so sure. We’re probably just going to we’ll we’ll be at the finish line.

Stone Payton: [00:51:19] Well, you know, you can always.

Alexander Bryant: [00:51:21] Say you like to you like to hunt and fish and drink whiskey around a campfire. So you’d fit right in.

Stone Payton: [00:51:25] Yeah.

Alexander Bryant: [00:51:26] So but no, that was the cool thing about that is like that was kind of my training ground. That was my first business and. It’s hard. It is not an easy niche to build a business in. Getting people to sign up for in-person classes and actually show up is very difficult. So that’s really where I built a lot of my marketing chops. And like everything in comparison, that’s been really easy. It’s like it’s I had to get good at it for it to succeed on any level at all because again, it’s a hard sell. You know, it’s not a service people like objectively need. I think they need it, but they don’t they don’t have to have it. And you’re asking them to part with their money, part with a weekend. You know, it’s a big ask for something that’s kind of considered an optional service. So, you know, marketing has got to be pretty squared away.

Stone Payton: [00:52:13] So have you had the benefit of one or more mentors along the way on your entrepreneurial journey to help you navigate some of that?

Alexander Bryant: [00:52:22] Absolutely. I couldn’t have done it without them. I’ve had I’ve been very blessed. I’ve had a lot of really good people cross my path over the years. One in particular, true Godsend. Actually, he is part of alpha side. He’s on my board of advisors and is going to be doing a lot with helping me grow the business. But I met him. He was one of our first students, so we launched in June of 2017 and he came to a class in September. And, you know, in every class we always go around the circle. Everyone introduces themselves, says who they are, what they do, what they want to get out of the class, what their training goals are. And it’s like I’m in marketing. I’m like, interesting. I do the marketing for this company. And then after the class, I’m like, Well, how do you think we’re doing? He’s like, Hey, I could use some work. And I’m like, Well, okay, tell me what to do. And we ended up building a relationship. He took a he took a liking to me. He’s, you know, he has been doing digital marketing since the Internet existed. He got into it in 1998. So he very generously shared lots and lots of years of experience with me, you know, just in exchange for coming to classes for free. And he’s actually the one that win in 2020.

Alexander Bryant: [00:53:34] When I pivoted from professional sales to marketing, he’s the one that gave me my first agency job. And, you know, we’ve been been together ever since that agency fell apart. Not his fault or my fault. And then when I started this, I’m like, Hey, you know, he knew I wanted to start my own agency. And when the time came, I was like, Hey, I want you to be part of this and be basically my my part time advisor. So that’s, you know, that gives me a lot of confidence going into this because I know, I know that I know my stuff, but I know if there’s anything I don’t know, he definitely knows it. But there have been a couple other people like, you know, I’ve, I’ve developed a lot of good friendships in this field as well. You know, John Cloonan, you know, he’s another local agency owner. I’ve worked with him, learned a lot from him. Fantastic guy. You know, I’ve really I’ve been blessed. I’ve had a lot of people really kind of help me along, Show me the way. And it’s I highly recommend anyone in business if you don’t have someone who’s mentoring you like you need to do that. That’s going to cut years off. Your learning curve like that will literally buy you back years.

Stone Payton: [00:54:41] So are.

Alexander Bryant: [00:54:42] You out of your.

Stone Payton: [00:54:42] Experience? Are you at a.

Stone Payton: [00:54:43] Point now where you’re getting a chance to mentor other people? Have you have you put that hat on yet?

Alexander Bryant: [00:54:48] So. Not anyone specifically, but the way that I see myself doing that is through the Alforsite brand of putting out all of this free content. Like if you follow me, if you’re friends with me on Facebook, I’ve started doing this thing that one of my mentors inspired me to do because he did it and I liked it. I do my today’s lesson posts where I share something that’s either marketing or business or mindset or lifestyle related that I think is valuable. So I don’t share what I’ve learned with any one person in any one person specifically, but I do try to share what I know. You know, selfishly, it positions me as an expert and people and it builds trust. So I’m more likely to, you know, close sales. But, you know, I also am a firm believer that those who can should that if you have the means and ability to help someone out, you should do that.

Stone Payton: [00:55:43] So what’s next, man? What’s the next big milestone? Are you going to try to replicate either the agency or the other business and like scale? Or are you just going to hunker down and just really squeeze the juice out of these two puppies?

Stone Payton: [00:55:55] So.

Alexander Bryant: [00:55:57] So Starcraft is actually to the point where it’s it’s more or less running itself. I still do the business development and marketing for it and I do teach when I can. I unfortunately don’t get to teach as much as I would like, but I’ve got 7 or 8 really excellent, highly qualified instructors on staff. I’ve got support staff that help out with classes. Like I’m very blessed because I have such great people that it’s gotten to the point that I don’t have to show up for class day like it can run without me. So I do want to, you know, once I scale out the side, I do want to turn my attention back to that because I do want to be I want to own that niche, the survival training, wilderness skills training industry like I do want to be the top player in that. But I had to put that aside for a minute. Alforsite know, I’m trying to scale that as big as I can take it. There’s the the cool thing about an agency is more within reason, infinitely scalable. You can make it there’s no limit. Like you can just continue to hire if you can continue to find good people to do fulfillment like do your, you know, media buyers to run your ad campaigns, web developers to build your client’s websites, social media managers, all that. You know, as long as you have a solid onboarding process, you’ve got client relationship managers, someone who makes sure that their needs get met and they get results. And you can find good people to do fulfillment. There’s no upper limit. That’s one of the things I love about the business model.

Stone Payton: [00:57:27] Well, I’m sure you’ve seen your share of waterfalls. Do you raise chickens? Do you like.

Stone Payton: [00:57:33] You know, I used to I that was. Did you really? So it’s unbelievable when I said that, I was laughing because that.

Alexander Bryant: [00:57:39] Was actually my very first business. So from the time I was about 13. So I grew up I grew up on a farm, actually. My parents still own it. I grew up poor. So I was like, how do I make some money? So I ended up I ended up with about 100 chickens and I had about a one acre garden plot. And I would sell at the farmers markets in Cherokee County. And this was back like years ago. I remember I sold at the very first Canton Farmers Market day that there ever was, like the day they opened. I was there. And I look at it and it’s huge. Like it’s blown up. It’s massive. Like now everybody’s into it. I’m like, Man, I was like And now I’m not doing it. And it’s like, Wow, I was totally mismatched to my timing there. But yeah, that was my first business. I did that for about ten years. It was cool.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:58:26] I’m collecting chicken mentors so you can.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:58:29] Be.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [00:58:29] A chicken mentor.

Alexander Bryant: [00:58:30] I mean, I’m a little rusty. My neighbors have them here in like the middle of Canton. They got chickens.

Meg Thompson: [00:58:36] I wonder what the percentage of today’s generation of entrepreneurs actually come from first or second generation farmers, because I literally named my marketing agency after the fact that I was a first and second generation like multiple people in my family were like farmers and like whether it was cattle farmers or agricultural. And it’s like so much of what marketing and sales is, is really planting and nurturing and watering.

Stone Payton: [00:59:04] Yeah, that’s a good point.

Stone Payton: [00:59:05] Well, and.

Alexander Bryant: [00:59:06] Also it gives you the work ethic too, because.

Stone Payton: [00:59:08] It’s true. Yeah.

Alexander Bryant: [00:59:09] If you have livestock like you can’t not show up for them.

Stone Payton: [00:59:13] Yeah.

Alexander Bryant: [00:59:13] Oh for sure. You got to take care of them for sure.

Meg Thompson: [00:59:15] You have to be there for them.

Alexander Bryant: [00:59:17] It’s it’s a very tangible like input versus output. Like you can tell, like I can like drive through the country and look at somebody’s garden plot and go like, okay, they’re squared away. Like they’re disciplined. They get up every morning, they pull weeds, they have irrigation set up like they, you know, they’re out there with the hoe, like making it happen, like taking care of their crops and others. I’m like, okay. They go out there like once a week. Yeah. Like that’s, you know, their, their beans are overrun.

Stone Payton: [00:59:42] So that’s true.

Meg Thompson: [00:59:44] You can’t let those weeds overtake the the healthy plant.

Stone Payton: [00:59:47] All right.

Stone Payton: [00:59:47] Man, Where can we go to learn more? Have a conversation with you or somebody on your team for one or both businesses, whatever is appropriate for you, man.

Alexander Bryant: [00:59:55] So friend me on Facebook because you know, my my businesses are my lifestyle, basically. So I post about both of them a lot. But for alpha site that’s alpha.com obviously follow us on social media for any and all valuable marketing information for blue collar businesses. I have a Facebook group called Atlanta Blue collar Pros that I’m cranking up. It’s just started, but I hope to do some in-person networking events with that. Do some live events really just provide as much value to the blue collar community as I can? And then Starcraft, you know, Instagram is best for us. It’s very visual. So, you know, follow us there as well. But yeah, love to get connected with you.

Stone Payton: [01:00:37] Well, we’ll make it happen. Keep up the good work and let’s come back, man, and share your story as it unfolds. This is fun stuff. Hey, stay with us, man. We got one more guest we’re going to visit with. Awesome. Let’s do it. All right. Are you all ready for the headliner? Oh, yeah. He’s been very patient. He’s been very supportive. I think I caught him taking some notes a little bit. He’s been. Hanging in there. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast. Mr. Gerald Scott. How are you doing, man?

Gerald Scott: [01:01:04] I’m doing great. It’s been great this morning. I’ve learned a lot. If you don’t learn something every day, you’re missing out. So this has been an interesting educational experience for me, and I’m not sure I fit in with the rest of these folks, but I try to fit in wherever I go.

Stone Payton: [01:01:18] I think you fit in. Just marvelous. I shared with the people here in the studio and I’ll share with our with our listeners the way I met Gerald. Many of you know that the field office for the Cherokee Business Radio Studio is Reformation. I was sitting there one time. I was listening to this young lady play some wonderful music and I saw this guy in a cool hat and he had a flora-bama shirt on. And again, as many of my listeners know, I grew up in that bar. I grew up in Pensacola, Florida, and Florida. Bama Lounge was just one of those places. We struck up a conversation. I was really intrigued to learn about your background. I would love for you to share with the folks in the studio and our listeners your background because you have quite the pedigree when it comes to this, this business of of developing communities and economic development. Man Tell us a little bit about your about your background.

Gerald Scott: [01:02:10] Well, my initial background was working for a nonprofit education program, started out in Nashville, Tennessee, which is where I grew up, a program called Junior Achievement, which most of you probably never heard of. But anyway, it’s a program that tries to help young people understand how business operates, how the economic system operates, and thought I’d probably doing that. All my life I’ve worked in Nashville, Ohio, Chattanooga, and came to Atlanta with the same organization, headed up the Georgia operation and actually had the opportunity to work with the international group to go over and spend time training teachers in Moldova, Belarus, Moscow and Hungary in the mid 90s. So I had that great experience and they kept wanting me to come to work for the national organization, but I didn’t want to leave this area. So they finally asked me to be the director of Southeast Operations, stay in Atlanta, have my office in Atlanta, and work with 22 cities in Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Carolinas and Tennessee. In four and a half years later, they decided they had some wise guy that came in and told me they didn’t need those positions, so they eliminated those positions. It didn’t help me any all but four years later, they realized that was a big mistake and they recreated the positions and asked me to come back. But and I thought about it, but I decided no, I moved on. At that point, I went to work for the North Fulton Chamber of Commerce, and while I was working there, I met a guy who made a presentation with First Community, started a company called First Community Development, which works with Chambers of commerce as an economic development groups around the Southeast on capital campaigns anywhere from 2 million to $20 million.

Gerald Scott: [01:03:42] And he wanted me to come to work for him. And so we talked for 3 or 4 months, and I finally decided, okay, I’ll do this. And so I tell people, he showed me a bill of goods. I shouldn’t talk about it now because he recently passed away. But we had a great experience. I worked for him for 23 years, so it was obviously good. But he told me, he said everything we do is within 2 or 3 hours of Atlanta. So you go home any time you want to. We work with Chambers of Commerce as an economic development group, so you have a built in base to do your fundraising. So when I finally decided, okay, I’ll do this, he said, Well, I want you to go up to Stanton, Virginia, which is actually 550 miles from my home. You don’t go home every time you want to to raise money for a Shakespeare theater group that had never raised a penny before and had no basis of data base at all. But he rate I did it little town in the Shenandoah Valley at 25,000 people, and we raised money to build an authentic replica of the 16th century Elizabethan playhouse similar to the indoor theater, not the Globe Theater, but the indoor theater that Shakespeare performed in great experience. People asked me, Were you a Shakespeare scholar? I said, how you got that job? And I said, No.

Gerald Scott: [01:04:49] When I was in high school, I said, I ran from things like that, but I saw more Shakespeare in eight months working with them that I’d seen in my entire life. And used that a lot too. But any rate, since then I’ve worked with Chambers of Commerce’s economic development groups, three theater groups in that little small town in Virginia, private schools in Georgia and South Carolina, Main Street programs in Alabama and Mississippi to help them develop strategic plans. And then we do feasibility study and then we manage a capital campaign if we’re all in agreement at that point. But it’s each one is a separate step that somebody who maybe needs to raise. Well, I’ll give you an example. Somebody told me recently that over in Cobb County that we have this program that we’ve been wanting to do and we figure it’s going to cost us about $50,000 to do it. So we don’t need to raise a lot of money. We just need to raise about $50,000. I said, Well, what are you going to do after the second year, the third year, the fourth year, the fifth year? So what we typically do is anywhere from 3 to 5 year campaign so that if you raise $50,000 in. One year you can raise to 250,000 or 2.5 million, rather, or 3,000,000 in 5 years. And so, any rate and people will ask me to say, well, because I’ve done, as I say, chambers of commerce and economic development groups.

Gerald Scott: [01:06:12] I just finished one with the classic center, which is a little bit different prospect because most of the groups that we work with have maybe 12 to 15 employees. Classic Center has 200 employees. And people ask me say, well, why couldn’t the classic center just do this themselves? And I said, because theoretically, everybody at the classic center already has a full time job. Yeah. And you’re going to tell them they need to raise 5 million, $5.5 million in addition to their regular job. I can tell you one of those jobs are not going to get done. It’s probably going to be the fundraising. If you hire somebody like me and it’s not just me. If you hire somebody to do this, my focus from 8 to 5 or I actually tell people 24 hours a day, seven days a week can be focusing on that, raising that money. I don’t have to worry about the events that are having the classic center or the events of the Chamber of Commerce is doing. I like to participate in those events and I like to support those events, but I don’t have to worry about who’s going to show up and who’s not going to show up. I don’t have to worry about selling memberships, but my focus is raising the money. And, you know, you go to different communities and do this. Two of the communities I’ve worked with most recently, one in Carroll County, their economic development group over there called Carroll Tomorrow.

Gerald Scott: [01:07:30] And down in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, which I just did before the classic center campaign called Area Development Partnership, they fund their entire economic development every five years by doing a five year campaign. So I’ve done two campaigns over in Carroll County. I’ve done where a company has done three in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. I worked on two of them, and we utilize a lot of volunteers. We primarily a corporate fundraising, although when you get into theaters and private schools, you’re doing a lot of individual fundraising as well. So it’s something I enjoy doing. It’s not for everybody. The company I was working with has ceased operations because the founder and CEO passed away unexpectedly in the spring and his wife decided to shut the business down. So I’m back in Woodstock now and just kind of hanging out in. But, you know, if anybody any non profit organization, Chamber of Commerce economic development group is interested in what they think they might want to just a little bit of money but we can sit down and talk with them. And again, because I’m doing some things on my own now, if it’s in this area, I’m not going to limit it to campaigns of $2 million or more. If you’re doing a big campaign, it’s $2 million or more. It’s going to cost you a lot more money. But again, by the same token, just like some of the others have talked about, I’m happy to sit down and talk with anybody. I enjoy meeting people. I always tell people, have people say, Would you be willing to talk to me and share some ideas with me? And I say, absolutely.

Gerald Scott: [01:09:02] If I share something you like, great. If I don’t share something you like, throw it away and forget about it. But I’ll be happy to share my ideas with you. It won’t cost you a penny. It’ll cost you a little bit of your time. And if there’s a fit there that I can help you out, then I’m happy to do that as well. So in this case, if it’s in, I’d say it’s in 100 mile radius of the Woodstock area. I’m happy to meet with anybody on my own at no cost to you to sit down and talk with you, share with you what I do, how we do it, and you tell me what you need and what you’re looking for. And we’ll see if there’s a fit. There’s a fit. Then we can sit down and talk about where we go from there. But typically when I do a campaign, I’ve done them all over the Southeast, from Virginia to coast to Mississippi. I’m there anywhere from 8 to 12 months, at least Monday through Friday. And in some cases, when I did the one up in Virginia, the one I did in Hattiesburg, I actually had an apartment in those locations. So I didn’t I came home about every six weeks or so. My kids are grown. And so that’s not an issue. And my wife has become accustomed to that. In fact, I’m at the point now where she says, Don’t you have something?

Stone Payton: [01:10:09] Don’t you have another project?

Gerald Scott: [01:10:09] Dont you have somewhere you need to go? I’ll stay home too long. It’s all good. But one of my grandsons, who you probably know, Judson, I think it was Judson once when he was much younger. I came home one weekend and I said, Boy, what are you doing in my house? He said, It’s not your house. This is Mimi’s house. You just you just come to visit. I said, Oh, I got a problem here. But seriously, it’s all worked out. It’s been great. And I just enjoy going places and meeting people. I enjoy helping people. As I mentioned, the first campaign I did was up in Stanton, Virginia, a little town in the Shenandoah Valley in 2000. I still talk to people up there on a regular basis, so I try to talk to people and I can see the benefits of what we do. We say we help build better communities. I just talked to the folks in Hattiesburg just a couple of weeks ago, talked to the folks over in Carroll County on a regular basis and other places, too. Classic center. I’m going over there for an event that they invited me to come back over for on Thursday night at the classic center and just enjoy building relationships around the country.

Stone Payton: [01:11:15] You’re a busy guy, man. I can see in your eyes and I can hear in your voice how much how much you love it. So these organizations, the ones that choose not to, for whatever reason, engage someone like you that and capitalize on the benefit of your experience base and your expertise. What are some of the common mistakes or traps that they fall into if they don’t have that professional support?

Gerald Scott: [01:11:38] Well, again, generally speaking, what happens is the campaign is generally not successful. The ones I’ve been familiar with where they say, well, we’ll just do it ourselves. Yeah. And I warn them, if you don’t hire me, hire somebody. Yeah. I also tell them, though, we do a feasibility study if they say they want to raise $5 million, we do a feasibility analysis. After we put the strategic plan together. What are they going to do with that $5 million? And I’ve had some cases where I’ve come back to them and said there’s not $5 million there. I think there may be $3 million. And I have one that said theater group that said, Well, we’re going to raise 5 million and we still want you to do it. And I said, if you’re going to do it for 5 million, you need to get somebody else because I don’t think it’s going to work. So I would not be good for you. It would not be good for the campaign. If I’m coming into this thinking it’s not going to be successful. They spent ten years and never raised the $5 million and finally went out of business in that case. So I’ve had several where I’ve just said it’s not going to work. Of others that I’ve talked to that ended up deciding to hire somebody else. And that’s fine too. I still want them to be successful and I still make contact with them.

Stone Payton: [01:12:50] Yeah. So how how would you counsel small business owners like like us? Alexander and Meg and Neil and myself? What should we learn more about? What should we do? What should we not do to take full advantage of like Cherokee County? This is such a marvelous, nurturing community. I’m sure there are things I should be doing every day that I’m not to to really tap into this community. I don’t know.

Gerald Scott: [01:13:15] I’m having to tap into it myself since I’ve been to work all around the Southeast. But I think, you know, getting involved in the community and it’s even getting involved in your organization. I think Meg said something about how much you participate depends on will determine how much you get out of it. I say that’s true in anything you do. And if you know, I’ve worked with a couple of organizations I will say that wanted to do this, but then they didn’t really get engaged themselves once we started doing it. And I’m smart enough to know that if I go into Hattiesburg, Mississippi, people in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, initially at least I think now may be different. But when I finished by the time I finished campaign, but initially they don’t care. Gerald Scott is right. They care who the organization is. They care who’s heading up the organization. I have the advantage of where I generally do campaigns of working. All the top people in the community work with the mayor. We work with the CEOs of the major companies in town and get those people engaged. And if they’re excited about the campaign, I know the campaign is going to be successful and we utilize those people to help open the doors. Because again, when I go to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, I don’t really know anybody there. Now in Carroll County, where I’ve done two campaigns there, Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where we’ve done three campaigns there, Stanton, Virginia, where I’ve worked with three theater groups up there.

Gerald Scott: [01:14:34] Once you go back the second time, you know the people I’ve done a couple of campaigns down in Valdosta, Georgia, with the Chamber of Commerce and an education group there, you know, people. So it’s a little easier going in. But again, you have to get engaged in the community and be a part of the community. Two of the best stories that I can tell about myself was one in Carroll County and one down in Valdosta. In Valdosta, when I was finishing up the campaign for the Valdosta Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce, guy with the Economic Development Department said to me one day he said, Hey, somebody told me you’re getting ready to move. I said, They told you I’m getting ready to move. And he said, Yeah. They said, You’re going to be moving in about 3 or 4 weeks. I said, Well, I’m going home. And he said, Going home? I thought your home was here. I said, That’s a compliment to me. Well, back to the second campaign in Carroll County. I’m having lunch one day and this lady comes up to me and said, Where have you been? I haven’t seen you in forever. I said, Well, I’ve been home.

Gerald Scott: [01:15:28] And she said, Been home? Where is home? And I told her and she said, I thought you lived here because she knew me from the first campaign I’d done. And those are compliments to me that you’ve engaged yourself in a community. And I think, again, that’s a key part of the success of whatever you’re doing. Meet people, engage yourself with people, let them know you want to be want them to be as successful, too. And they make you look good. They make you successful. But again, it’s a team effort. We say that. You know, raising money is like a sport. It’s a team effort. One person can’t do it. I can’t come in. People say, well, can you come in and just own your own? Raise $5 million for us? No, I can’t do it. I’ve got to have you engaged in the process. You’ve got to be a part of this process. You’ve got to help us sell the process. Most of what we do is in smaller communities, as I’ve mentioned. But I’ve done two, three statewide campaigns, two in Mississippi and one in Alabama where I was working all over the state. And again, meeting people all over the state in various communities and so forth. But I need somebody that can open the door for me. If you got.

Stone Payton: [01:16:35] To collaborate with the local folks.

Gerald Scott: [01:16:37] To collaborate with the local folks, you got to get the doors open. And once I can get in the door, then I can help make the sale.

Stone Payton: [01:16:43] I believe it. All right, man, We’re starting to run out of time. Let’s make sure that our listeners can get in touch, in touch with you. What’s the best way for them to reach out? I mean, if I want to connect with you, I’m just going to head over to Reformation.

Gerald Scott: [01:16:55] Well, I’m going to add that as a part of it. I don’t know. I don’t know that the Reformation folks will like this, but I’m going to say this anyway. If you can’t get in touch with me anyway, you can get in touch with me through the Reformation Brewery in in Woodstock. Well, any of the Reformation breweries. But they know me in Woodstock. In fact, I’ll I’ll share a quick story if you’ve got a minute after I make it happen. Otherwise you can reach me on my cell phone. (404) 444-8426. Or I will give you my personal email address right now because the company ceased operations. I’m working kind of on my own, so I’m kind of in between right now. G Dog one G. Dawe, G one the number one at Outlook.com. You can reach me there if you can’t reach me any other way. Hey, I just throw it out on the table and say, this is who I am. I’m not trying to be somebody that I’m not right now or ever. But if you can’t reach me any other way, you can reach me at the brewery.

Gerald Scott: [01:17:46] I’ll share a quick story. I had a meeting with Mr. Martin several years ago. Most of you know Cherokee I Yeah. Department and Mr. said to one of her employees said I got a meeting with your friend Thursday, a friend of yours Thursday afternoon. And this person also was at that time this goes back oh, 5 or 6, seven years ago. But I still tell the story. Owner I’m not going to tell you her name, but she said she was working part time at the brewery at the time. In addition, she said, what’s his name? She said, Gerald Scott. And she said, I don’t know anybody by that name. She said, Well, I thought he was a friend of yours. She said, Nope, not a friend of mine. I walked in the office on Thursday afternoon and first thing she said was, Gee dog, what are you doing here? Mr. Said, I didn’t think you knew him, She said, I never knew what his name was. So. So anyway, that’s just one of the crazy stories. But I bet.

Stone Payton: [01:18:36] You got plenty. What a fantastic way to wrap, man. You got to come back and get us caught up on these new campaigns that I know you’re going to listen.

Gerald Scott: [01:18:43] Well, I’m happy to work with anybody. And as I said, I’m happy to set up somebody thinks a nonprofit organization, Chamber of Commerce, Economic Development Group or any nonprofit organization thinks we need some extra money for something. If they want to just get in touch with me, I’ll be happy to sit down with them, share my thoughts and ideas if I can help them in any way at all. Sometimes it may even end up just helping them on a volunteer basis or a pro bono basis or something at this point, because I love what stock been here for longer than some of you have probably been alive. Been here for. His 50 years.

Stone Payton: [01:19:21] Well, I’ve.

Neeahtima Dowdy: [01:19:22] Been alive longer than that.

Stone Payton: [01:19:24] Well, Gerald, thanks so much for coming in, man. We’re going to grab some more beer for us all over with, but it’s been a real delight having you in the studio, man.

Gerald Scott: [01:19:31] Thank you so much. I’ve enjoyed it. And as I say, I learned a lot myself today.

Stone Payton: [01:19:35] All right. Until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today. And everyone here at the business Radio X family saying we’ll see you again on Cherokee Business Radio.